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December 09, 2007

Stir-fried Wikipedia, with pimento

Knowing how I love to wikichet, my boss Kevin shared a little anecdote from China back in July:

I kid you not, “wikipedia” actually was the English translation for one of the dishes at a Chinese restaurant I just ate at in Beijing. Apparently, this restaurant believes that a wikipedia is some kind of mushroom, because there were two pages of the menu devoted to mushroom-focused dishes, and wikipedia seemed to be sprinkled liberally throughout.

He pointed out the restaurant’s site, but as it’s in Chinese it proved unhelpful, and I never got around to posting the story. Now via Boing Boing I find that another dude made the same discovery–and this time he brought a camera. Turns out that “wikipedia” goes great with everything from BBQ eel to bean curd.

In other funky Asian/English language news:

My photographer friend Clare is dating a guy from Okinawa, and he points out that the now-ubiquitous term “bokeh” (lens blur) refers not just generally to fuzziness in Japanese, but also Alzheimer’s disease in particular. The usage is apparently insulting.

This is so typical of automated translation tools. That’s why I always tell my colleagues not to reply on these tools 100%. They’re best only used as a guide, but according to this Chinese restaurant, probable never at all. The best way to get something translated if it’s really important is probably by using translation companies. Language professionals wouldn’t allow these kind of mistakes to happen.